Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing apparatus for processing a wafer.
Description of the Related Art
According to a fabrication process for semiconductor devices and electronic parts, a plate-like workpiece made of any of various materials, such as a semiconductor wafer, and a ceramic substrate, is thinned down to a predetermined thickness by a grinding apparatus or a polishing apparatus, and then divided along projected dicing lines into individual device chips by a cutting blade mounted on the spindle of a cutting apparatus or a laser processing apparatus. In recent years, to meet demands for various processing modes (thinning, and the like) for workpieces, there has been proposed a wafer processing apparatus called a cluster module system in which various processing units are freely combined and interlinked (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2015-8195). The cluster module system makes it possible to process various different types of device wafers simultaneously.